The story of Polyus is one of my favorite space tales to tell--it's hard to believe at first. "Yeah, did you know the Soviets tried to launch an orbiting nuclear laser battlestation, but the launch went badly and they never tried again?" Inevitably results in goggle-eyes from the audience.

Excellent research and writing by Amy. Looking forward to seeing more of her work on Ars!

This is a great tale for all engineers and designers: If any single key component of your project has to execute a complex maneuver or else the entire mission will fail, make sure to test the hell out of it first to be sure that it will work.

It *was* a fantasy, Edward Teller's fantasy. He tried to convince people the x-ray laser would work, but no one believe him, so he went all political and found Reagan was entirely receptive. Once he started getting traction, every other science fair project jumped on too. It was the 50s all over again.

The x-ray laser failed miserably in testing, and continued to do so. None of the other efforts had any possibility of working, something engineers on the *other* projects would be more than happy to tell you, in depth (ugh, trust me on that one).

OstracusToo ambitious. I'm not certain even now if we could create SDI.

It was very ambitious, but it's only when you push yourself that advances are made.

All that knowledge has not gone to waste.

It's probably possible to create a laser or railgun powerful and precise enough to hit and destroy an ICBM in it's boost phase, when it's still traveling relatively slow, but powering it in orbit would be a major challenge.

It *was* a fantasy, Edward Teller's fantasy. He tried to convince people the x-ray laser would work, but no one believe him, so he went all political and found Reagan was entirely receptive. Once he started getting traction, every other science fair project jumped on too. It was the 50s all over again.

The x-ray laser failed miserably in testing, and continued to do so. None of the other efforts had any possibility of working, something engineers on the *other* projects would be more than happy to tell you, in depth (ugh, trust me on that one).

And yet there's now the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne that is, for all intents, an x-ray laser. And all for the low-low price of $0.5B (that they admit to).

I honestly don't know if it would be possible to steer the beam at the extreme angles needed to leave the ring and aim at an incoming missile. However, if that's possible the beam steering in the atmosphere would be a non-issue. I'm also uncertain if the total pulse train energy is even in the ballpark to destroy a warhead.

What amazes me is that the idea of placing a CO2 laser in space seemed like a good idea at the time. We've got no way to cool our cavity so we'll just vent all the plasma after the shot. Seems that I could make dummy SDI satellites cheaper than you could load your laser. Ground-based lasers with in-orbit targeting mirrors always seemed borderline possible. Perhaps the flying chemical laser that's been loaded on an aircraft would work better. At least that way much of the atmospheric effects can be minimized.

I think Reagan's SDI had two goals: one to force the USSR into ruinious to them arms races beyond the traditional arms race; two to actually develop a workable missile defence system. The first goal was probably the primary one - force the USSR into a spending race the Soviets could afford. Reagan believe the Soviet economy was much more brittle than most analysts at the time believed. Stressing the Soviet economy would cause the leadership to make hard choices or bankrupt the USSR.

...But had Polyus-Skif succeeded, space would be a very different place—and the Cold War may have played out differently.

Well - it didn't. Why do people always seem to dwell on what could have been.In 1987 the "Cold War" (that history knows) was pretty much on the down slide by that point anyway. This is a winded statement right up there with all the whimsical attempts by the Germans during the end of WW2 that could have also been "game changers". Many things could have played out to change the course of history at different points in time - but they didn't.

Wow, that was a fascinating article. I spent most of my college and university years studying the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe - but never got as far as the space program (mostly I concentrated on public policy, the break up, and emerging democracies in the Eastern Bloc). So this was both interesting because I know the actors who were running around in Moscow at the time, and because I love technology and enjoy reading about the Soviet space program. Thank you for this, and as a note to Ars as a whole: MORE LIKE THIS PLEASE.

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As a note on the technology itself, to think that something borne out of anger and hatred during the longest ideological war of the 20th century, could potentially become a part of one of the largest projects built by all human kind is mind blowing. An engine and power system built as part of a tool that, if used, would have wiped out the human race, is now part of a tool that, if used, could propel us to the stars.

It *was* a fantasy, Edward Teller's fantasy. He tried to convince people the x-ray laser would work, but no one believe him, so he went all political and found Reagan was entirely receptive. Once he started getting traction, every other science fair project jumped on too. It was the 50s all over again.

The x-ray laser failed miserably in testing, and continued to do so. None of the other efforts had any possibility of working, something engineers on the *other* projects would be more than happy to tell you, in depth (ugh, trust me on that one).

And yet there's now the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne that is, for all intents, an x-ray laser. And all for the low-low price of $0.5B (that they admit to).

I honestly don't know if it would be possible to steer the beam at the extreme angles needed to leave the ring and aim at an incoming missile. However, if that's possible the beam steering in the atmosphere would be a non-issue. I'm also uncertain if the total pulse train energy is even in the ballpark to destroy a warhead.

What amazes me is that the idea of placing a CO2 laser in space seemed like a good idea at the time. We've got no way to cool our cavity so we'll just vent all the plasma after the shot. Seems that I could make dummy SDI satellites cheaper than you could load your laser. Ground-based lasers with in-orbit targeting mirrors always seemed borderline possible. Perhaps the flying chemical laser that's been loaded on an aircraft would work better. At least that way much of the atmospheric effects can be minimized.

Well one can do much on Earth. Try making it small enough, power supply and all and putting it in space, much harder.

Also as you pointed out, if we had gotten something working. There's both the issue of cheap countermeasures, and would it have been a leaky shield?

One interesting point in all of this is that from the Soviets' perspective, they pretty much had to take Reagan seriously about SDI even if all of their technical experts thought it was implausibly audacious. Remember, despite the best efforts of the Soviet space program, despite vast sums of money and countless man hours devoted to their lunar program, they never succeeded in getting anywhere even remotely close to landing a person on the moon. We had Apollo. So if you were a high level Soviet decision maker, you pretty much had to take seriously the notion that the American aerospace community could somehow make the impossible possible...

Something doesn't add up. The artists rendering of the rocket breaking apart says it's from an issue of Ad Astra from 1986, but in the paragraph before that it says the launch took place in 1987...

Unfortunately I don't have the original issue to verify, my research said the image was from the May 1986 issue. It's possible it was speculative. (Edit: Meaning the image was speculative, not the research. I wish I could verify with more certainty, sorry about that.)

Isn't it a little ironic that ballistic missiles, for the most part, all reach space at the apex of their arc? I know what they mean by definition about space being "non-militarized," but this always makes me chuckle a little.

The whole Space Race was based on ICBM improvements and the need to throw increasingly heavy warheads longer distances. One of the reasons the Soviets had an early lead was that their warheads were less sophisticated and larger than the American ones - they HAD to design bigger and beefier engines and boosters in order to hit their targets. It was "easier" for them to loft satellites and manned capsules early on. (and by "easier," I am in no way belittling their achievements - it was still harder than hell to do what they did.)

Great article and one of the many, many reasons I always come back to Ars.

The US Air Force worked on the Air Borne Laser project for years and years; this was a chemical laser mounted in a converted cargo 747, with a huge ball/turret in the nose containing the aiming optics. The intention was a boost-phase intercept of missiles - let the remains of their nasty cargo drop back down on whoever was launching.They flew a lot of tests but as far as I remember never fired a full-power shot - it was cancelled just a few years ago.Taking a laser that is powerful enough to burn a missile at 200km in a few seconds, then fitting it on an aircraft together with optics that can handle the required combination of power and precision - well that is genuinely hard, as in $10b-won't-do-it hard. Putting it into a satellite - order of magnitude harder, given the various constraints you run into wrt. weight, launch G-forces, etc etc; you also need a whole bunch of them to be sure that they will be in a position to intercept missiles; and the "ammunition" will last for only a very few shots.So the what-if-they-had-succeeded question is pretty much settled, they would NOT have succeeded, in any case.

The US Air Force worked on the Air Borne Laser project for years and years; this was a chemical laser mounted in a converted cargo 747, with a huge ball/turret in the nose containing the aiming optics. The intention was a boost-phase intercept of missiles - let the remains of their nasty cargo drop back down on whoever was launching.They flew a lot of tests but as far as I remember never fired a full-power shot - it was cancelled just a few years ago.Taking a laser that is powerful enough to burn a missile at 200km in a few seconds, then fitting it on an aircraft together with optics that can handle the required combination of power and precision - well that is genuinely hard, as in $10b-won't-do-it hard. Putting it into a satellite - order of magnitude harder, given the various constraints you run into wrt. weight, launch G-forces, etc etc; you also need a whole bunch of them to be sure that they will be in a position to intercept missiles; and the "ammunition" will last for only a very few shots.So the what-if-they-had-succeeded question is pretty much settled, they would NOT have succeeded, in any case.

Yup, part of my initial skepticism. The other is that cheap dummy warheads would have been an effective countermeasure. Basically saturate and overwhelm an opponent. Also much as has been noted with terrorism, they only have to get it right once, we have to get it right every time. Sucks if you're the place that a bomb made it through.

And yet there's now the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne that is, for all intents, an x-ray laser. And all for the low-low price of $0.5B (that they admit to).

Not an atomic-bomb powered one though, which is what you need.

Remember that episode where Homer desperately tries to prove that guns are useful to Marge by doing things like opening his beer with one?

That's what Teller was all about. You know, nuclear bombs can do anything! Like digging harbours (Chariot), natural gas fracking (Gasbuggy), providing power (Pacer) or shooting down warheads (Excalibur). It was all the rantings of a mad scientist.

What amazes me is that the idea of placing a CO2 laser in space seemed like a good idea at the time.

It wasn't, they basically did it for fun.

The actual concept was to place multiple warheads on stealthy battle stations, and place a couple of them in Molniya orbits. That would keep at least one of them over CONUS at any given time. Better yet, they could manoeuvre them over the south pacific so it would take time for them to be found again when the popped high over the north.

So now you have a wonderful first-strike weapon, one that's far behind the boost-phase interceptors and all of the US's early-warning network. The warheads could be soft-launched, so there would be no rocket signature to see. Launch to impact was a few minutes, far too quick for any realistic chain of command to deal with.

There were concerns about ASATs, which was a problem that sunk US efforts along the same lines in the 60's. So the Sovs considered autocannon and low-powered lasers for short-range duties. The reason for the laser on the testbed was basically that they had this laser, and the platform, so why not?

The whole battle station concept is a *horrifyingly* bad idea, in terms of destabilization, but it was all they had. Andropov (Gorby?) actually mentioned this in passing at one point, although I can't find a source for the life of me. Responding to SDI, there was a mention of "non-linear responses" to the program.

The ironic/funny part of all of this is that in the end all we had to do was talk about getting rid of all of this junk, and sure enough, it was gone. One frigging sit-down over a coffee and the entire madness of MAD was ended. So now the kids get to worry about global warming instead (Canada, FTW!).

The US Air Force worked on the Air Borne Laser project for years and years; this was a chemical laser mounted in a converted cargo 747, with a huge ball/turret in the nose containing the aiming optics. The intention was a boost-phase intercept of missiles - let the remains of their nasty cargo drop back down on whoever was launching.They flew a lot of tests but as far as I remember never fired a full-power shot - it was cancelled just a few years ago.

They engaged three missiles, shooting down two of them successfully before the program terminated. I don't know if they originally intended to operate the laser at even higher power levels; but the ABL hit levels high enough to do its job.